The Originality of John Caryll's Sir Salomon

The Originality of John Caryll's Sir Salomon Richard C, Taylor One of the first highly successful adaptations of Moliere on the Restoration stage, John Caryll's Sir Salomon; or, The Cautious Coxcomb (1669), drew raves from the Carolean court, entertained London audiences for a span of fifty years, and provided the versatile Thomas Betterton with one of his favorite vehicles. Why, then, has the play been ignored by most comprehensive studies of Restoration theater? One source of this neglect has been the prevailing opinion that most early borrowings from Moliere are "servile adaptations by negligible playwrights ."! The intrinsic merit of plays such as Sir Salomon, which sought to Anglicize the French master, has been obscured. Norman Suckling has argued that the Restoration borrowers of Molière often produced plays that were wittier, theatrically more effective, and structurally more complex than the originalst Caryll's farce succeeds on all three accounts. Sir Salomon is less blatantly didactic than Molière's L'Ecole des femmes (1662), but it is fully as effective as a stage vehicle. In adapting the play, Caryll adds an original sub-plot, which features one of the Restoration's early "Frenchified fools": John Downes comments in Roscius Anglicanus (1708 ) that Sir Arthur Addell, played by James Nokes in a production at Dover, "put the King and Court to an Excessive Laughter . . ." (p. 29). Given Sir Salomon's stage record (including a remarkable first run of twelve performances beginning in April 1670), the originality of the play's structure and characterizations, and the appearance of many of the age's great performers—Cave Underhill, Henry Harris, Theophilus Keene, and Betterton himself—scholars and RICHARD C. TAYLOR is a doctoral candidate, specializing in Eighteenth Century literature, at The Pennsylvania State University. 261 262Comparative Drama critics should find the play worthy of more study than it has received.3 Most scholars have followed Gerard Langbaine in A? Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691), who dismisses the play as "very little more than a translation" (p. 549). His assessment of the comedy, repeated by John Genest and James Halliwell-Phillipps, prevailed until the 1930's. Caryll himself may have contributed to this neglect. In his epilogue he humbly acknowledges: For we with Modesty our Theft avow, (There is some Conscience shewn in stealing too) And openly declare, that if our Cheer Does hit your Pallats, you must thank Molliere: Molliere, the famous Shakspear of this Age, Both when he Writes, and when he treads the stage. Too many critics have taken Caryll at his word. While the situation in Sir Salomon's main plot clearly resembles that in Molière's comedy, the similarity does not extend much further. In fact, Caryll's tribute to the French dramatist may have been at least partly a ruse. As Frank J. Kearful observes, "To cite Molière as the source of one's farce was apparently such a drawing card that even when he was not a model he might be advertised as one."4 John Wilcox recognizes the originality of some elements of Sir Salomon, but claims that "a great comedy of manners is debased into a mere comedy of intrigue . . ." (p. 68). While Sir Salomon may lack the original's pointed satiric undertones, it succeeds as a farcical romp involving English characters and settings, multiple plots, and highly effective verbal and dramatic irony. Caryll rejects Molière's verse couplets and his long, argumentative soliloquies as unsuitable to his English audience. Herein lies the root of Wilcox's objection to the play: The end, the form, the spirit, and even the matter of Caryl's [sic] play are essentially British. It is impossible to trace to Molière's influence even the slightly unusual fact that this Restoration play is clean verbally and free from mockery of conventional moral standards, (p. 56) Preferring the rigidity and "high seriousness" of the French original, he takes offense at the English preference for idiomatic diction and structural variety. Despite his bias, Wilcox at least establishes that the play is more than a vulgarized translation of L'Ecole des femmes. Richard C. Taylor263 Unfortunately, aside from Kenneth Cameron's "Strolling with Coysh...